At some point someone will get some house appliances that are leaking repaired and then will know what exactly is failing. A leak under a sidewalk is not going to fill a house with gas and blow it up. Even if the leak breached the ground you could light it and it would just cause a flare; it wouldn't explode as long as the line is pressurized. Something inside the houses is failing, something in the appliance; just not sure what. could be a regulator or a gauge. Something. "Old lines" are still going to be iron pipe so can take a LOT of pressure. Unless they fail inside a house, which is very unlikely, they would not cause a problem to a house. All my furnace work has been with oil units so I'm not familiar with gas hookups. I can only imagine that the 'overpressure' was one hell of an overpressure to have caused all this trouble. All of these things have safeties too; if the pilot light goes out a sensor cools and the gas feed is shut off. Perhaps that shutoff is a flimsy unit and gets blown out somehow. I'm really curious and hope that all the gritty details are eventually revealed on this screwup.
On a side note; The buried 10/8-inch stout steel pipeline up here that feeds the 14,700HP Rolls Royce turbine engines that turn the pumps at the first four pump stations along the Trans Alaska oil pipeline operates at 1090psi for 149 miles and feeds 3 pumps. Each turbine eats up 4.3million cu ft of gas per day. They've been running for over 40yrs and have never been replaced or rebuilt and the buried gas line has never suffered a failure.
I like Deans 'good nose' story. Don't ever ignore your nose on that one! I sat up in bed a few wks ago at 0400 and noticed a faint diesel smell. I shot up and went into the basement, two stories down, and had a internally defective and leaking low-pressure gauge I had put on to test the line pressure to my monitor heater. Thanks Beijing. What a mess. I had to pull a sheet of CDX plywood paneling off the wall(screwed on fortunately), cut 2ft off the bottom and replace it as it was soaked with diesel fuel. The concrete floor and some of a block wall got several scrubbings over several days with boiling water and a combination of Dawn dish soap, Oxi clean, and an industrial engine degreaser before the odor abated. I never ignore my nose. I can't tell you how many times I've awaken in the middle of the night and smelled something that just wasn't right, and not once have I done this and not found an issue. An iron pan left on the gas range on low and burning dry, or on the wood stove, or the wood stove overheating. Once my roof in a small remote cabin was smouldering from dripping creosote and about to burst into flames. That woulda been fun, I can tell you. Had I waited 30 more minutes to wake up it would likely have been to a blazing roof 3ft above my face.
I guess the lesson is: If something doesn't smell right, there's a problem.
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